Arson Attack on German Paper That Printed Hebdo Cartoons

A German paper that printed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons has suffered an arson attack on Sunday. The Hamburger Morgenpost is a tabloid newspaper that has offices in the city of Hamburg, Germany.

The attack on this office comes just a couple of days after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. They experienced an attack by trained terrorists that resulted in the death of 12 people, including two police officers. Rocks were thrown at the windows in the rear courtyard of the German office, and this was followed by a firebomb.

The rear of the offices was the archives room of the paper. The incident occurred about 2:00am local time.

After the attack on the Paris offices, the Hamburger Morgenpost reprinted three of the controversial cartoons from the Charlie Hebdo collection. Along with them, they used a headline that said “This much freedom must be possible!”

The damage to the newspaper office was said to be “relatively minor.” The arson fire was put out quickly by the fire department, but two rooms were damaged, including the archives. No one was in the building at the time of the attack.

Police noted that there were two people close by the arson fire who acted somewhat suspicious. They were arrested and are being investigated. No more information about them has yet been released, but the investigation has been placed into the hands of state police and the intelligence authorities.

Authorities are saying that the arson attack on the German paper cannot yet be attributed to the printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons. It simply is too early to make such an assumption.

After the attacks in Paris by terrorists associated with al Qaeda, news came out that intelligence groups in the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) detected an increase of “chatter” among jihadists announcing more attacks, a wave of them. This is a real concern because just in the UK, there are known to be about 150 jihadists that could commit similar acts.

Among the chatter has come news that al Qaeda considers Britain to be a more valuable target than France. The same organization says that the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices are a signal for multiple attacks on other cities in Europe, including Rome.

In addition to the arson attack on the German paper, an evacuation took place in Belgium at the offices of the Le Soir paper, after a bomb threat had been received. The caller was anonymous and claimed that a bomb would go off in the newsroom. It also had published the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

US intelligence services may have evidence that the brothers involved in the Paris attacks possibly had contacts in the Netherlands. Intelligence groups such as the National Security Agency in the U.S. have confirmed that other attacks such as the brothers committed may soon follow.

The people of France continue to show massive amounts of support for those who died in the Paris attacks. Security forces remain on high alert in the country. News of the arson attack on the German paper for the printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons, and the threat of bombing in the Belgium offices, seems to be uniting the people of Europe to strongly defend the freedom of the speech and of the press.